Interview by The Heroine's journey

What I truly love about my work is the continuous touch with reality. Everytime I start a project I have to touch base with real people, not with the idea of a market, not with the utopian vision of consumers, but we the authentic people that need to be deeply understood. I get to dig on the motivations and frustrations of people to find what they really need so I can design a real story with a meaningful product. Understanding how and why they eat, makes me also think of my own reality while being more rational about the food choices I make. It’s an enriching point of view which I like to think makes me more aware of the great diversity I live on.

The idea of happiness changes through life. I believe is finding and playing with the constant balance (and also imbalance) between my personal, professional, social and creative interests. These parts of my life play different hierarchical roles depending on my life stage. Right now, I’m probably putting more weight on my professional happiness, because what makes me happy right now is exploring my creative possibilities and understanding the responsible path I must embark to drive positive changes to the world of food.

Getting lost on the daily operational tasks and letting myself being enfolded by the unreal promises of the brands I work with. This might sound very cliché, nevertheless, the more I work with industry, the more I understand why they take their bad choices, so my fear is to mess up  my priorities and my self-motivations with these fake brand speeches.

Overthinking everything and being constantly unsatisfied.

Marije Vogelzang, because of her positive and creative initiatives to incite better relationships with food and because of her courage to find her own place in a new design field. Also I admire Danielle Nierenberg because of her strong positioning about food crisis and her wide scope of projects covering from agriculture, gender issues, climate change and sustainable food habits.

Contradicting people just because. A mental exercise to argumenting.

To do good and to protect my insecurities, never to enhance myself, I always feel terrible when I have to do this.

Dealing with superficial marketing,  selling stories that are not true and enabling celebritism.

When I was contacted by an international food design platform I admire, to be part of their thinking network.

I would love to believe more  in myself and reduce my micro-management obsession.

Stimulate insightful discussions through meaningful ideas about how can we drive positive change for contemporary stakes.

In a renovated apartment in a cultural, dynamic, but human city, with a touch of latin soul.

My piano and my books

Questioning everything I see and I hear.

A park with high trees in the middle of a traditional neighborhood in my town city, Bogotá.

I don’t have a favorite place. It depends on the day and the occasion, but I always prefer casual and hidden places, with unpretentious good food and exotic drinks.

100 years of solitude, from Gabriel García Marquez, for teaching me about the regional customs of my country and Delirio, from Laura Restrepo, for her sensibility on her language to describe social relationships.

Mario Vargas Llosa because of his incredible narrative skills and the deep and historical subjects of his books and Ernest Hemingway because of his delicacy on the way he treats time.

I will start with the Requiem from Mozart and I will finish with an inspiring song  that can be Oceania from Bjork or Hoppipolla from Sigur Ros.

I think the idea of a hero is very risky, it represents a thoughtless idealization of a character,  limiting the construction of your own thoughts.

Interstellar, because of its great visual value, its high level of understanding the complex timeline and the fascinating idea of having simultaneous realities.

Inspiration, freedom of thought, social catalyzer and raw pure creation.

My boyfriend, Isaac, who is always inspiring me with his creativity, his unconditional support while being the perfect person to bounce ideas with, he has always the best answers.

Maybe it’s a little bit aspirational, but I would love to work with Massimo Bottura to understand more about the democratization of food.

I’m looking forward to work in some project related to agriculture in latin america and also with food start-ups because I would love to be part of that flexibility to adapt new ideas and take them at an incredible speed to the market.

I’ll keep working in Mexico in foodlosofia (http://foodlosofia.com/), writing articles in different medias (https://medium.com/@natalyrestrepo/the-real-cost-of-foodies-98bba78f9cd9), launching new educational programs in food design (soon the online diploma of food design thinking) and finally with a new creative project in Colombia and Mexico.

Passion is what is always going to inspire me to keep understanding more and more, and is also the constant reminder of all the things and projects that still need to be done!

Juanita and Valentina Añez, really talented musicians who created a whole new music genre in the latin american music scene.